Discovery of ‘Barnard b,’ the Nearby Exoplanet with a Three-Day Year
Barnard's Star, located 56,800 trillion kilometers away in the Ophiuchus constellation, is relatively close on a universal scale. Curious about how one could reach such a distance?
Barnard’s Star, Our Celestial Neighbor
Imagine a star six times closer to us than any other, nestled in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
That star is Barnard’s Star, a mere 56,800 billion kilometers away from Earth. In the cosmic scale, it’s practically next door.
The Discovery of an Exoplanet
Recently, the mysteries of Barnard’s Star began to unfold. After five years of intense research, astronomers have identified an exoplanet orbiting it. This breakthrough, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, was enabled by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
Dubbed “Barnard b,” this exoplanet orbits its star twenty times closer than Mercury does the Sun. It boasts a surface temperature of about 125°C, and a year there lasts just three Earth days.
📢 Breaking news! ESO’s #VLT has unearthed a planet around the closest single star to our Sun! 🪐🔭https://t.co/xepUlivtiV
At just 6 light years away, Barnard b is also one of the few known exoplanets lighter than Earth.
Illustration: ESO/M. Kornmesser pic.twitter.com/yjUCChIvFl
— ESO (@ESO) October 1, 2024
A Planet Outside the Habitable Zone
Unfortunately, the conditions on “Barnard b” are unlikely to support life as we know it.
Researchers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) determined that this planet lies outside Barnard’s Star’s “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, crucial for life to emerge.
“Even though the star is cooler than our Sun by about 2,500 degrees, it’s still too hot for liquid water to persist on the surface,” notes Jonay González Hernández, lead researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands.
The Quest for Exoplanets
The discovery of “Barnard b” marks a significant milestone. Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf, is a prime target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets.
The proximity of its “habitable zone” allows astronomers to monitor planets there for days or weeks at a time, rather than years, facilitating discoveries like that of “Barnard b.”